Most of us are time-strapped these days. It's hard enough to fit in the usual day-to-day chores... but if you
want to manage a writing career as well, it can seem well-nigh impossible! You might find just the help you need in
these articles on time management.

At times it can seem so hard to snatch time to write that you feel like just giving up. Any writer can identify with that feeling! Here are some suggestions that will help you organise your material so you're ready to take advantage of whatever snatches of time you have - and whatever energy levels are present!

Checklists are an efficient means of keeping yourself on track with all your writing tasks, from improving your technique to streamlining your home office. You can find checklists in many places on the Internet (such as those offered by Writing4Success) but the more you personalise those checklists, the more useful they will be.

A great deal can be accomplished in successive small windows of time. Next time you realise that you're putting off starting something because it's all just too large and overwhelming, grab a piece of paper and divide the job into small, achievable tasks. Then tackle them one at a time. The tasks suggested here can be slotted into a short window of writing time.

How do you get that novel finished? Well for starters, avoid the lure of "the next book". It's all too easy, when things are moving slowly in your current book, to be tempted to find something that's more exciting...

"Lockdown mode" is a legitimate and effective way to find time for your writing. In fact, it's a brilliant alternative for writers who find it nearly impossible (or ineffective) to carve a few hours out of a typical week.

If you're having trouble achieving what you had hoped to with your writing, you might find that an easily-seen record of your progress helps you to stay on track. This shows you how you can use two different progress sheets for any number of writing tasks. On one of them you can record your progress in percentage points (with intervals of 10% up to 100%, when the task is finished) and on the other you can check off up to ten steps in a complex task.

Sometimes I feel like Peter Pan, coming out at night to play. To play with words, to play in my own created space; my world, my friends, while the real world sleeps around me. My mind wanders, thoughts rising and falling - slowly at first, as if on a child's merry go round. My characters come to life inside my head and begin to laugh and play, often a giggle escaping my lips as the vividness of the scene playing out in my head becomes a reality...

How do we squeeze time for our writing into our hectic, time-poor lives? Multi-task I hear you say! I used to think so, but research is showing that the more tasks we try and tackle at the same time, the less effective we are as thinkers. So instead of keeping fifteen balls in the air at the same time, I try to find windows of time during which I can achieve a writing job.For creative brain-functions I quarantine "golden-time".